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Two Players, Two Illnesses, Two Wins

Venus Williams in her 6-0, 6-3 victory over Kimiko Date-Krumm. “It was great to be back out there,” Williams said.Credit
Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — Two women who have battled illnesses produced victories in first-round matches at the Sony Ericsson Open.

In her first singles match since announcing her diagnosis with the auto-immune disorder Sjogren’s Syndrome, Venus Williams blasted her way to a 6-0, 6-3 victory over Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan on Wednesday.

With her sister Serena supporting her in the stands, Williams had an emphatic start, pounding a 121-mile-per-hour ace on the first point. She continued to dominate the 41-year-old Date-Krumm throughout the first set, taking it, 6-0, in 30 minutes.

Normally stoic on the court, the 31-year-old Williams showed far more emotion than she normally does, clenching her fist often and shouting “yup!” and “come on!” after points.

In a conservative (by her standards) white-and-black dress, Williams kept points short by moving forward on the court. She struck 26 winners to only 17 unforced errors.

“I don’t have the time to give any points away,” Williams said of her strategy. “I have to really stay focused out there and take everything from me. So I tried to stay focused on my game plan. I’m an attacker. That’s what I do best, and that’s what I tried to do today.

“At this point in time, it’s important for me to play smart.”

Williams next faces a far tougher challenge: the 2011 Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, the third-ranked player in the world.

“I feel like a person that has an auto-immune disease,” Williams said when asked if she felt any fatigue. “You know, for me, I’m not going to probably feel like everybody else. But for me, my personal best is to give 100 percent.”

The rest of Williams’s answer was interrupted when her pet Havanese, Harold, climbed out of her bag and began to walk away.

“You know, someone with an auto-immune disease definitely faces different challenges than other people,” she said later. “But it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.”

The day before Williams’s comeback win, another player came back from a far more perilous illness.

In her first match on tour since a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis 10 months ago, Alisa Kleybanova battled the way she always has.

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Playing the 64th-ranked Johanna Larsson in the first round Tuesday, Kleybanova, a 22-year-old Russian, started tentatively. She dropped many of her normally penetrating ground strokes inside the service line, and double-faulted on break point to give Larsson the opening game. She went on to drop the first set, 6-2, but found her rhythm and frustrated Larsson for a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory.

Kleybanova, who started practicing again only a month ago, showed a remarkable ability to play her best tennis on the biggest points; she saved 14 of 16 break points on her serve, and converted on 3 of 7 she had on Larsson’s.

“Tennis-wise, I felt pretty good from the beginning,” Kleybanova said after the match. “I didn’t expect anything, because I had no idea how is it going to be out there. You can practice as much as you want and it doesn’t matter if I just practiced one month, or I would’ve practiced one year. Still, the first match is always the first match — you never know what’s happening.”

Kleybanova’s ranking dropped from a career high of 20 to 248 during the months she missed. She played in front of only about 100 people on the grandstand court, which can seat up to 5,100.

But the match was played in the same draining style that was Kleybanova’s hallmark before her illness. Several times she had to towel off the brim of her hat as sweat dripped from it.

After closing out the win on her fourth match point, Kleybanova celebrated quietly, drawing her fists into her chest before the handshake, then walking over to give her coach, Julian Vespan, a long hug.

“For the rest of us, in normal conditions, it’s just the first round,” she said. “But for me, inside, it was really emotional. And of course, for my coach and for my friends that were out there for me today.

“You know, it’s not like I celebrated so much, like jumping around, but inside, we just looked at each other, and it was something between us. It was a very special moment.”

Kleybanova acknowledged she was tired and happy to have a day off before her second-round match against the No. 22 seed Maria Kirilenko on Thursday.

Last year Kleybanova had been dealing with flulike symptoms for months. But her symptoms became far more severe during a tournament in Rome in May. Once she received the diagnosis, she returned to Italy to receive treatment. Kleybanova finished her treatments in December, when she was deemed cancer-free. She began training again in the middle of February in West Palm Beach, Fla.